The Dark Force Defense League
by SqornshellousZeta
Summary: The day after James and Lily died, Sirius Black 'killed' Peter and went to Azkaban. But what about the last marauder? The morning after he lost his friends Remus Lupin goes on an adventure he will never forget. PG for violence. NO-slash
1. Trains and Gold Coins

J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter and everything to do with it. I'm just an obsessed fan with nothing else to do but write stories about her characters. Well there's my disclaimer! I also want to say that at the moment all other of my stories are on hold. I WILL complete them, but for now I just need to write something not based on humor. Yes this story will have its share of stuff to laugh about, but I just want it to be a good, thought out, well written, action, adventure story. I know this chapter stinks, but it's the start. If you would please review it will be Immensely Appreciated!!! I will continue with this story if I know someone is reading, if not then I will consider myself a failure and just stick to my pitiful humor stories and never again take on a challenge in my life. Oh and my stories have NOT disgusting twisted romances (you know what I mean!)

This takes place the day after Dumbledore left Harry at his Uncle's house.

Chapter One: Trains and Gold Coins

It was November again, the very second of November to be precise. The Centaur's Arrow train station was decorated in a wide variety of Halloween ornaments. Pumpkins were all over the place, bats slept in their cages on the ceiling and confetti littered the floor as if a party had recently been held there. In fact a party had. The day before, the little wizard train station was packed with wizards and witches celebrating the death of the dark lord Voldemort and the little boy who defeated him. The train officers and wizards who worked at the Centaur's Arrow had left the cleaning to the next day as the party had ended well past midnight and they were extremely tired. At the moment, when the sun only began to rise, only one person occupied the train station.

Remus Lupin sat alone on the furthest from the entrance bench he could find. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were glazed over as if he were half asleep. He had not been celebrating with all the other wizards and witches in the world the day before. Instead he had spent the day packing and recovering from Halloween's full moon and other events, which took place that night. He planned to go on a trip away from Hogwarts and his little shack. That morning after writing a letter to his parents informing them where he was going, the marauder had entered the train station and proceeded to wait for the earliest leaving train, with a rather forgotten (and melted) bar of chocolate he dubbed breakfast in one hand and the handle to his backpack in the other.

A loud snap behind him woke Remus from his half-asleep condition. He let go of his backpack and plunged his hand into his robe pocket, pulled out his wand and spun around to come face to face with his old headmaster. With a gasp of surprise, Remus stumbled backwards onto his bench and nervously ran his hand through his silvery dark blonde hair, quickly noticing the mistake he made. His hand had been covered in melted chocolate bar.

"Running away again are we?" Albus Dumbledore asked in a kind voice, his bright blue eyes burning into Remus' golden brown ones. "You always have had a knack for running away when something turned out or went wrong." He examined his once pupil's face with pity and sat down beside him, offering Remus a lemon drop which Remus refused by shaking his head. He suddenly began to feel slightly sick. He had left early so no one could follow him. So that he and his secrets could be far, far away.

"Sorry professor," Remus finally managed to say. "I'm sorry for all the trouble I may have caused you in school and with the ministry."

"No, no dear boy. I have had far too many problems with the ministry to have anything as small as thing be considered a problem. And I am quite certain that I have yet to see the worst of the ministry. You have been quite brave and a great help in this war. I feel that I should be saying sorry to you for bringing you boys into it." Albus looked at expressionless face of the young man beside him and then he turned his head to look at the confetti covered brick floor. "And I believe it is time that you can start calling me Albus now that you haven't been my student in three years."

Remus nodded his head deep in thought as a question he needed to ask formed in his mind. "Is Voldemort really dead?" Remus' gazed finally moved from the floor to the sign on the wall pointing to the exit.

"No," Dumbledore yet again answered the question many people had been asking him since the dark lord disappeared, although very few people believed it. "Harry will have to face him again and you will have to face Harry again. Your the closest person to a parent he has left and sometime during this war, he will need you." Remus shook his head.

"They hated me. They thought I was the traitor. That I had been working for Voldemort. I only saw Harry around seven times before they pushed me out of their lives..." Remus noticed his voice cracking slightly and stopped talking. He never wanted to talk about his 'friends' again. He wanted to move on.

"They did not hate you. In fact in the last year I've had more then one conversation with each of them wanting to know about your well being and if I believed you were the one. They did not truly believe you had betrayed them, yet they also did not want to believe that Sirius had." Remus felt his face grow red with anger at the mention of his former friend.

"Did you believe that I was the one?" he asked before he could stop himself.

"No," Dumbledore answered. Before he could say anything else Remus interrupted him.

"It does seem fitting that they would blame me," Remus said, remembering the last time he had seen James, Sirius and Peter. They had their turns yelling at him and he had his turn yelling back. In the end they had called each other so many thing and hurt each other so badly that it resulted in forever breaking a bond of friendship unlike anything any Hogwarts students had had before. 'Peter had been the only one quiet during their fight.' he thought to himself. 'I never knew if Peter thought I had betrayed them and I will never know since Sirius killed him the last night.' He felt his anger flare up inside of him. Why had Dumbledore followed him? If Dumbledore knew so much he would surely know that what Remus wanted the most is to be left alone.

"No it doesn't," Dumbledore said after carefully picking out words, which would not cause Remus' temper to get the better of him. "But no matter what they did or what had happened, you will always have to remember that they were the ones who gave you a life you can never forget. It now may not seem fair either that they would..." What Dumbledore didn't think was fair, Remus would never know because just before Dumbledore could say his thought-out words, his train pulled up into station making more noise then either of them thought reasonable because of all the silencing spells the workers at the Centaur's Arrow could use.

"My train is here," Remus said in a dull tone. He looked Dumbledore in the eye again, his gaze went from angry to sorrowful. He didn't want to be angry with Dumbledore, but pretending everything was fine, perfect and dandy wasn't an option he wanted to think about. Standing up he slowly started walking towards the sky blue steam engine.

"You know it is OK to grieve," Dumbledore said, looking at Remus' now stony expression. "One day or another you will need to grieve about what happened to James, Peter and Lily. You cannot stay angry with them. Grief is all a part of being human, especially one in the middle of a war like this. And love, especially for the ones you lost is the greatest power known to the world. Your friends were heroes and you need to remember their bravery, kindness and will to stand when no one else would with love." Dumbledore recited this like he had said it thousands of times to students who had lost loved ones in the war. He had told it to James and Sirius when the Potters died, he told it to Lily when her parents died, he told it to Peter when his father went missing, he told it to the Order each time a member died, but this time it made no difference.

"Well I am not human and this war has nothing to do with me anymore," Remus said, his face growing slightly redder. Dumbledore stayed silent for a while then decided to speak.

"Where do you plan to go?" Dumbledore asked in a tone which he decided didn't sound as though he where too worried or wanted to keep the younger wizard from going on his journey. He sounded as though he was only mildly interested, but Remus had known Dumbledore more then many of the other Hogwarts students. Dumbledore had become quite like a grandfather, which Remus could talk to when there was no one else.

'All he wants is to make sure that I don't do anything stupid,' Remus thought to himself. 'He wont track me.' Feeling quite unsure due to the fact that Dumbledore seemed to be able to watch people without them knowing, Remus finally decided that shrugging was the best action. He turned to face Dumbledore from where he stood by the train. Dumbledore, not quite content by the answer he was given just smiled and pulled a large bag out of one of the pockets of his long red and gold robes.

"Last night I dropped Harry off at his Aunt and Uncle's house. You remember them, they where at Lily and James' wedding. Petunia Dursley and I have come to an agreement that Harry will stay at their house till he is eleven. After that he will be there each summer long enough so that he can still call that place home."

"She agreed to a blood bond?" Remus asked a little surprised since when he had met her, she didn't quite seem to be a muggle who would put up with anything that linked to her sister or magic. Dumbledore just continued smiling and imitated Remus in shrugging.

"I want you to take this," Dumbledore stated and handed Remus the bag. The bag was heavy. Remus gave Dumbledore a puzzled look before unfastening the rope around the bag and looking surprised. He gasped.

'Merlin,' Remus thought to himself. 'I cant take this bag! Its filled with gold coins!' Without thinking the extremely startled Remus threw the bag back at Dumbledore who caught it in one hand as if he was expecting that sort of reaction. A few of the coins fell out and landed on the floor.

"Remus I insist that you take it," Dumbledore said in a menacing voice Remus had rarely heard the old headmaster use before. "Consider it a few years pay for your work for the order," Dumbledore lowered his voice, "and if I see so much as one coin back from this bag then I assure you that you will end up with an extra large bag of coins the next day." His voice went back to normal. "Now you have better find a nice spot on the train before all the compartments are taken." Both wizards looked around. Neither of them had seen the many people who have entered the station while they were bickering. The people where now starting to stare ate the old headmaster and his old pupil, though some of them were too busy staring at the few gold coins on the floor with greedy looks on their faces. Remus bent down and picked them up.

"Thank you Albus," he said while slipping the coins into the bag he know had in his chocolate covered hands, he knew he wouldn't win a fight against Dumbledore. "Say goodbye to Alice and Frank for me." Remus smiled for the first time he had in about a year.

"I will," Dumbledore smiled back and watched as his former pupil, one of the five students he had said he had trusted enough to let them join the order, disappeared inside the train, a little happier and more excited to start a new adventure then he had been earlier, chocolate still in his hair.

But one last thought came to the marauder's mind.

"Umm Albus," he said appearing at the door again. "I also want to say sorry for telling the centaurs that you and the other teachers were the ones who stole their telescopes. I'm afraid that the friendship they once had with the teachers of Hogwarts is gone. But if they do decide to start a war there is something you should know. It really was Sirius who stole them."

Dumbledore smiled as he watch once again the retreating chocolate covered hair of Remus. A turned and began walking to the exit, wiping the hand he had used to catch the bag free from chocolate with a handkerchief he carried in his pocket and noticed the strange looks he was receiving from others who thought just maybe the crazy old man had another bag of gold.


	2. Memories of the Marauders

You people ROCK! Thank you for the reviews!!! I'm really sorry this chapter is rather short, but it took me forever to write.

Nothing belongs to me.

Chapter two- Memories of the Marauders

"I spy with my tremendously supernatural nocturnal eyesight, something that is an indescribable shade of emerald."

"Sirius, 'I spy something green' would be a much simpler way of saying that. Oh, and if you do have tremendously supernatural nocturnal eyesight then you would notice that we are in the middle of a forest at midnight so pray tell, what doesn't look green?" James chuckled to himself as Remus ended the brief I spy game.

"I agree with Remus, please Sirius, do not speak until you spy a hooded and masked brute with a wand." Sirius sighed in defeat and leaned back against the tree stump he had earlier been sitting on. The order had been split into three teams and had been in the forest for hours, waiting to wreck the death-eater meeting, which was 'supposed' to be held there.

"I spy two exasperated nerds who have an exceedingly Slytherin sense of humor..."Sirius stopped quickly. Seconds before James could attack his friend, the leaves rustled and someone came into the clearing.

"'Ello Moody old chap! I'm positively thrilled that you could join us this evening!" Sirius stood and extended his hand to Alastor (Mad-eye) Moody and was walloped in the head with the end of his staff knocking Sirius off his feet and sending him sprawling across the forest floor.

"What happened?" Remus asked, standing and staying out of harms way.

"The bloody death-eaters were forewarned!" Moody growled. "They know we are here and if they come they will come with far too many for us to handle. We best evacuate the Order know and you, (he pointed to James) wake up that fat sleeping lump!" All eyes traveled to where Peter slept peacefully on the ground.

"I can't believe him", James said as he began prodding Peter with a stick. "He can't sleep without a night light and yet he can sleep in the middle of a forest while waiting for a death-eater meeting."

"Its because the lethifolds wont dare attack where there are death-eaters," Sirius grumbled as he pulled himself off the forest floor. Finally once Peter was awake and aware of what was happening, Moody was nearly to the point of cursing the four marauders.

"Pettigrew, Lupin and Black, you three go alert team one. Potter and I will be with the rest of the order. If you do fall under attack send red sparks up. If you happen by unlikely chance see You-know-who then do not under any circumstance let him know of Potter, team two and I.

"Yes sir!" Sirius grabbed Peter and Remus by their sleeves and began pulling them into the dense forest, out of the small clearing.

The next thing Remus Lupin knew was that it was raining. Actually raining was an understatement. It was storming. He forced himself to open his eyes and look around the small train compartment he was seated in. Being quite thankful that nobody decided to come into and share his compartment with him, Remus stretched himself across the cushioned bench and propped his head up with his backpack, to where he was facing the window. Then he started to remember his dream. He ran his hand through his hair again and closed his eyes, trying to avoid any emotion to brake through his calm mask. The rain was slowly getting worse, though it really wasn't the rain, which was troubling him at the moment.

He now remembered what he was dreaming about quite clearly. It was a memory of one of their first order missions, only two weeks after graduating from Hogwarts. Sirius, despite his name had been the one to try to lighten the mood, even if the others were preparing for possible death. All four boys had agreed to go on the mission without a second thought.

Had Sirius turned then?

If James had known his friend, the over optimistic Black, who against all odds became a Gryffindor and one of the bravest wizards ever to be in the Order was the man who would have killed them all in cold blood, what would he have done?

Would he, Remus have ever bothered to be friends with the other three if he knew what the future held? Dumbledore had told him that he would soon come to realize that even if the marauders friendship were gone, Remus would one day remember them with happiness.

But everybody, even Dumbledore was wrong at times.

Deciding not to dwell the subject any longer, the last free marauder picked up his bag and began to shuffle through it. The first thing he came across was a rather humorous object he had had since fifth year. It was a Snape voodoo doll, made by the combined efforts of Sirius and James. It had to be kept in a small plastic bag due to the charm used on the hair, which will make it drip grease from now till the end of days. Remus had to confiscate it from his friends due to the fact that he was prefect and then there was the fact that they had been torturing Snape for around a week without stop.

Apart from the random objects used to torture his fellow students, the bag also held two shabby and patched wizard robes, a small sack filled with snacks and what he was looking for, a small red book, charmed to hold the thoughts and events he had been writing in the book since he was eight. As the book had unlimited writing space, the marauders sometimes used it to record notes they passed in class and plans for pranks. Today though Remus had no intention of looking back in the book. After pulling a quill out of one of the small compartments of his other bag, he began to write potential destinations, until he was interrupted by thunder and a shriek coming from the hallway by his door. Standing up tossing his journal and quill onto his seat, Remus did what he would later regret and pulled the compartment door open to see a young man only a few years older them himself sprawled out on the hall floor with all sorts of papers, odd objects and strangely enough, pictures of himself surrounding him.

Despite the loud lightning storm outside which threatened throw the train off its tracks, Gildroy Lockheart was having a rather enjoyable day. He was on his first day of his tour of the world and the magical beasts, which inhabited it and he had finally gotten around to starting his first book, _Wandering with Werewolves_ despite the fact he knew very little about them. Still to him the best part of the day was that he was totally and completely free to do whatever he wished, which is hard to do when one is hiding at one's parents house from death-eaters and other dark forces. Right after receiving the news that He-who-must-not-be-named miraculously disappeared he began planning his journey and moved out of his parents house for good.

Now he was free.

CRASH!

Gildroy was woken out of his thoughts as lightning shot across the sky. Still startled, Gildroy stared out the window as he walked down the hall, not noticing the candy wrapper lying on the floor.


	3. Lockhart Actually Did Meet A Werewolf

I'm not dead.

Or at least I think not.

And I think therefore I am.

So I am not dead.

Sorry for not updating for a while. It's the Latin teacher's fault. And the fact I was trying to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November didn't help either. Well since Remus Lupin has been on that train for around four months now I figured I would update. So here!

Chapter Three: Lockhart Actually Did Meet A Werewolf

The train's ceiling was covered with bright orange and mucky blue wallpaper and combined with the pretty dots swimming in front of Gildroy Lockheart's eyes the ceiling was quite beautiful. The dots were swirling and dancing and leaping about and Lockhart felt enchanted. Suddenly the sight of some one leaning over him, saying something he couldn't quite catch, ruined it all. He blinked and the swirling and dancing dots swam away and were replaced by a headache.

"Are you all right?" the man asked him.

"Mmumphuurrrg!" Gildroy muttered and sat up. This apparently meant 'No'. His belongings surrounded him on the floor, but that was not what bothered him mostly. His new beautiful blue robes his mother bought for him on his last birthday were covered in little ink spots. His favorite robes, which matched his eyes, were terribly ruined, as where the pictures of himself, a few luckily blank pieces of paper and a few papers with phone numbers random girls had given him.

"THEY'RE _RUINED_!" he yelled, releasing some of the horror inside of him. The man just started at him, shrugged and then extended a hand towards him.

"Here, let me help you." Before Gildroy took the hand he finally looked at the man and a look of disgust crossed his face. The man was wearing an ugly brown and patched coat, which looked like it was older than the man himself. His blue jeans were faded and baggy and his shirt was an ugly dark green. His hair was messy and graying and his shoes were an old faded brown and pealing. Obviously this man lacked any fashion sense, but Lockheart did take the hand and was pulled up to his feet.

It didn't take long for Remus to recognize the horror he so unwisely helped. It was Gildroy Lockhart who was the prefect in the marauder's second year. Despite the fact that he was three years older, cursing, pranking and annoying him was the only thing that the marauders and Snape had in common. Snape hated him because of the many times Lockhart caught him sneaking into the potions classroom after hours. Sirius hated him because Lockhart competition when it came to girls. Being a ringleader of the marauders, they hated Lockhart also. In fact, it took a very optimistic person to stand staying five minutes near the blonde terror. Remus usually wasn't an extremely optimistic person. And so to sum it all up, Lockhart will easily start to get on Remus' nerves.

'Lockhart is really starting to get on my nerves,' Remus thought to himself as he helped Gildroy collect the first pages of his mostly unwritten book, _Wondering with Werewolves_. Lockhart had been telling him of the cousin of the vampire he had once vanquished, who had ran into the train and knocked him down in an attempt to kill him. Unfortunately, well for Remus at least, Lockhart survived.

"Hey I remember you!" Lockhart suddenly exclaimed when the mess was cleared. "You were one of those unstylish Gryffindor kids! I forgot your name, well next time you see your two little annoying friends, tell them that I'm now a famous author and I believe that I still am more stylish than that little Sirius punk..."

Yes, obviously as you can surely imagine, Gildroy Lockhart had spent too much time brushing his hair and looking at the mirror and too little time reading the news. And after rambling on for the next five minutes did Lockhart finally notice that Remus had disappeared back inside his train compartment. "Must have seen that vampires cousin," Gildroy muttered and quickly looked around him (just to make sure there really wasn't a vampire's cousin near.) With a flash of lightning and the roar of thunder, Gildroy ran to Remus' compartment, threw open the door and wildly looked around, spotting the werewolf that was staring at him with his eyebrows raised.

"The vampire returned," he said, sitting down on the other bench.

"Oh," Remus replied and returned to his journal. Silence overcame the compartment as they passed a small town in which all the inhabitants seemed to skip rather than walk.

"So what is your name?" Gildroy asked, as they traveled through a field of suspicious looking cows.

"Remus Lupin."

"Really, now I remember, it is quite hard to remember names when you travel so much and meet so many interesting folk. Especially when so many of my enemies have strange names. Your name is quite strange too, if you don't mind me saying. It kind of has a bizarre sound to it. Reeeeeeemus Luuupin. But don't be ashamed of it! Why I met a yeti a few weeks ago who destroyed an entire city because he was ashamed of his name. I had to go undercover as a mailbox to crack that case, but in the end I suggested that he change his name to Bob and the town was saved.

"That's nice," Remus absentmindedly answered as he wrote down '_Demiguise, Far East?_' In all truth, he had only been half listening to Lockhart's rambling, the rest of his mind kept going back to the questions which would stay in his mind for quite some time. What is he going to do once the money Dumbledore gave him is gone? What type of jobs did werewolves get? Where they having a funeral for James and Lily at this very moment? Why didn't he pack more chocolate?

"Hey, you have a diary too!" Lockhart randomly announced as he pulled an impossibly bright lilac diary out of his backpack. Remus could hardily believe that he heard a grown man utter such a word as 'diary.' Little did he know that as Lockheart said the word diary (which will be used seven times until this chapter is over) a mysterious figure walked in front of the train of the train tracks, and was ran over.

He made sure to add in his 'diary' to make sure to get more chocolate before the day is over and to somehow make sure to get a new compartment away from Lockhart as soon as possible. For now, he felt much too tired to gather all his stuff and leave. So he stuck his 'diary' back in his pocket and closed his eyes and tried to keep awake as Lockhart droned on and on and on and on and on about what he was writing in his diary at that very minute.

(Authors note: short? I know. But I wanted to update before vacation. I'M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!)


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